Space General Space News, Image and Discussion Thread

Urabrask Revealed

Let them go.
Founder
Yeah, Apollo 13 was the furthest out if I recall.
That was the one where the dark side of the moon was supposed to be inspected, right? Maybe that mission left a collective trauma on the collective conciousness of Humanity. "Don't venture out too far, or your ship will explode"?
 

AndrewJTalon

Well-known member
Founder
That was the one where the dark side of the moon was supposed to be inspected, right? Maybe that mission left a collective trauma on the collective conciousness of Humanity. "Don't venture out too far, or your ship will explode"?

Um, no. It's just really, really, REALLY frigging hard to get into space. As Robert Heinlein famously said, "Getting from the Earth to orbit is halfway to anywhere."

In essence, for the same energy required just to get a spacecraft into orbit around Earth, you could send a spacecraft out on a Hohmann transfer orbit all the way out to Saturn. Our planet is very dense, and has a thick atmosphere. Getting out of the gravity well is really freaking difficult.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
getting to the moon is also, theoretically, about as difficult as getting to Mars. Its about 4 km/s LEO to LLO. LEO to LMO is only about 5.66 km/s. If you aero break on the Mars side, you can theoretically do it in basically 4km/s. And well, about half of that is actually getting out of Earths gravity well. If you can start at the edge of Earth's hill sphere, or even just LLO, you cut it down to about 1-2 km/s to go Earth to Mars.

Which I guess is the reason why we have been able to send probes to just about everywhere. The Delta v really isn't the limiting factor. The Mars NTR nasa was looking at have mass ratios below 2.


The problem is time. Moon is already 3-4 days, Mars is around 9 months, everything else is multi year. So, its not so much difficulty getting places (though thats part of it) but how long it takes to get anywhere.

I guess that's why near earth Astroids are so interesting: its somewhere you can do without comitting to a multi year mission.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Come to think of it, what was the furthest a human being was away from Earth? The Moon, probably, because I don't recall any mentions of astronauts spending time beyond that orbit.

It's weird how confined to Earth's gravity well we are...

You mean living humans ? becouse there were many failed soviet mission which officially never occured.Some could get soviet corpse beyond Lunar orbit.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
I'm amused by the Bezos response of 'It wasn't actually space! I'll be the first! Really!'

I'll go team Branson on this one, his plane looks cool which is the only thing that matters. Bezos' rocket looks like a chode. Not good enough.

Oh my gosh your right. Bezos Spaceship is lame. It looks like a giant White penis. And only the tip is going into Space.

Branson's starship actually looks like a proper spacecraft and unlike the Phallic Rocket, a shape of things to come... :sneaky:



Taking the window seat... What self entitlement as well...
 
Last edited:

Doomsought

Well-known member
The two biggest hurdles in space is the constant radiation beyond Earth's magnetic field and the unknown effects space travel has on the human body.
There is only one hurdle in spaceflight: MASS. Any problem can be solved as long as you have enough mass. Radiation is a matter of having literally anything in between you and the radiation source, though some materials like water work slightly better. Gravity can be simulated through spin gravity. Both of these things are heavy.
 

Harlock

I should have expected that really
Oh my gosh your right. Bezos Spaceship is lame. It looks like a giant White penis. Akd only the too is going into Space.

Branson's starship actually looks like a proper spacecraft and unlike the Phallic Rocket, a shape of things to come... :sneaky:



Taking the window seat... What self entitlement as well...


Its just sad, Branson has that 2001 sort of style while Elon is going full Flash Gordon with his big project. Nobody wants to ride in a Pinto when the other guy has a Bentley :p

Maybe its a reflection of the men involved, Branson made his money in music and is known for getting lost in balloons. Elon is tech and engineering while being known as a bit, well, he marches to his own tune shall we say. Bezos owns a bookshop which branched out and the only cool thing I know he's done is buy the starship Enterprise. (From the 80s movies) But even then he apparently hasn't had it restored. Shame.

Maybe he's just not very exciting
 

Culsu

Agent of the Central Plasma
Founder
I applaud Blue Origin for the achievement, but by and large it's sort of lackluster, given that the company has been around for 21 years with basically nothing but a demo flight to show for despite having the wealthiest man alive at its back. In the meantime SpaceX has revolutionized the space launch business. Branson's idea is a dead end, but by the time it was conceived it seemed the way to go. That, and he has less money to throw around. Musk almost went bankrupt with Falcon 1 and only succeeded at the last try, after which his company pretty much killed the competition in less than a decade. Bezos, despite great hardware on paper and almost infinite cash, hasn't even gotten his F9/Heavy equivalent on the pad while Musk already is halfway done making it obsolete.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
It will be interesting to see if, even though Virgin Galactic's current operations are a bit of a dead end for deeper progress into space travel, if the passenger liner thing will be feasible for other rich people (and I suppose stuff like research or for media purposes) to actually pay to take the trips to Sub-Orbit or whatever on his non-penis spacecraft.

Meanwhile... the dunking on Jeff Bezos continues...


Filthy commies are merely afraid they'll be left behind by the billionaires. :p
 

Urabrask Revealed

Let them go.
Founder
It will be interesting to see if, even though Virgin Galactic's current operations are a bit of a dead end for deeper progress into space travel, if the passenger liner thing will be feasible for other rich people (and I suppose stuff like research or for media purposes) to actually pay to take the trips to Sub-Orbit or whatever on his non-penis spacecraft.

Meanwhile... the dunking on Jeff Bezos continues...


Filthy commies are merely afraid they'll be left behind by the billionaires. :p
I'm sure Bezos is in tears over the hate of lesser beings.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top